Microsoft will open its 100th retail store Saturday ... sort of

Technically, Microsoft will open its 100th retail store location on Saturday but that statistic combines the number of the larger main stores with the many smaller kiosk-like specialty setups that the company has opened as well.

Today, Microsoft celebrated the opening of its 98th store location at the Woodlands Mall in Woodlands, Texas. George Foreman was on hand to open the large store location. However, on Saturday, the company will open four more smaller specialty stores, and depending on how fast they open, one of them will be the 100th Microsoft Store. After Saturday, there will be 57 large store locations run directly by Microsoft along with 45 specialty stores, for a total of 102 locations.

For the record, the kiosks will open at the Staten Island Mall in Staten Island, New York, the Towson Town Center in Towson, Maryland, the Westfield Southcenter in Seattle, Washington and the Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood, Washington. Based just on time zones, it will be a race between the New York and Maryland locations as to which store will be the 100th Microsoft "brick-and-mortar" location to open.

All four of those stores will offer people who show up on Saturday a special sale on the 8-inch Dell Venue Pro 64GB tablet. It will be priced at just $129, while supplies last.

Microsoft opened up its first retail store in October 2009 in Scottsdale, Arizona and launched its first store in Canada in October 2012 in Toronto. So far, the company has yet to open any stores outside of North America.

Do you live near one of the four new specialty stores that Microsoft will open on Saturday and if so do you plan to show up on that day, perhaps just to get the cheap Dell tablet?